chapter 51
SAM WANTED TO eat out most nights but couldn’t afford it. As a new lawyer, she hadn’t generated much income, and each month when her bills came, she was reminded of just how sorry her ex-husband was. She still couldn’t believe he had cheated on her and yet she had ended up with nothing. But she appreciated that being broke and happy with cereal for supper was infinitely better than married and miserable with fine dining.
She giggled at the memory of the six bottles of skunk scent she had strategically hidden in the attic of her former home. Little glass time bombs. That winter, they would freeze and break. Eventually the scent would thaw and begin stinking to high heaven. It was her only act of retaliation, and it gave her great pleasure.
Sam and Tom the cat were celebrating her liberation by painting the foyer of her childhood home. The red-and-green-stained-glass transom above the front door was well over 140 years old. Frequently she would touch the hole in the doorframe where a bullet intended for her grandfather had lodged and was preserved. He had been a respected doctor in the community, but during the strife of the 1960s, he had treated an injured Negro teenager who had been beaten while walking home after a civil-rights rally. The young man was the son of their much-loved maid. Sam’s grandfather was carrying the boy up the porch steps when a car drove by, and someone fired several shots. Fortunately, no one was injured.
As she painted, she began to worry about Walter Severson. She had a gut feeling that the Kroger security team was going to have him arrested soon. They had been building a case, and she sensed where it was heading. Anticipating their next move, she began planning hers. It was a high-stakes chess match and her first time to sit at the game table.